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Oh, Also...I broke down and purchased the first series of Young Justice 4" figures a while back when TRU had their Buy-one-get-one sale, and I have to say that I'm actually kind of impressed with them! I'd mainly wanted the Hall of Justice dio, but the figures, though lacking in articulation, are actually of quite high quality! I'm thinking they'll look fantastic as a group once the lineup is complete, and I am surely planning on collecting the entire line now.

I've already got all of Young Justice 4" series 2. I still think the lack of articulation sucks, but I actually really like them and the Hall of Justice dio is great! It's a lot bigger than I'd imagined, and I can't wait to complete it! I'm actually planning on using it to display my Eaglemoss DC lead figures collection on.

In time for the new movie, Mattel has released some of the previous wave of "Batman" 1:42 die-cast line of batmobiles, now with a new boring-as-hell packaging of a brown rockface with the source's logo and title (in this case the Batman Returns white logo and hollow lettering) and the name of the car in small letters. It's like they're TRYING to fail, pricing these at $8 and giving them the worst possible packaging.

Anyway, I passed up the Penguin's duck car thing, the Adam West Batmobile (how many of these do we need?!?) and the Adam West Batcopter (it looks too small and thin and plasticky for the price, also it's never been my thing, not one of the more interesting parts of the '66 Batman film), picking up only the Armored Keaton Batmobile.

So, I hadn't realized there were differences between the '89 and Batman Returns armor, but there are, and this definitely the latter; the shield is flat at the top in the first film, the second it is lower until it runs into the air intake; also, the "mass murderer" wheel bombs are smaller in the second film. That said, Mattel took a few liberties with both those changes, making the wheel hubs tiny and the intake hump very tall; they also stretched the whole thing, especially the rear end which seems too long.

I also hadn't realized that Mattel wasn't just including a removable shell, this is a nigh-solid chunk of Zamac with its own wheels and a faux batmobile closed cockpit in plastic within a small sliding portion of the shell. It's an interesting idea, and gives it a real feel of being its own toy. It also makes it possible for kids who aren't familiar with the Keaton films to just imagine it's a whole armored Batmobile rather than an armored shell, and I don't mind that.

The whole thing is cast in Zamac, painted black, and given weathered dark gray brushing to give it more of a realistic look, despite the movie version being clean. The underside has a new sculpt, and at the middle and rear end hints at the car that would be underneath, were there one. The main sculpt has the smaller panels and the swirled wheel covers from the film, and even the notes they didn't get 100% accurate are suggestive enough to give a pass.

The real gimmick here though is the 3 largest armadillo-like panels make up a separate piece (the only plastic on the exterior proper, and fairly well-matched to the metal) which slides forward about half an inch to expose a black plastic version of the Keatonmobile within. The good aspect is that they did a competent job sculpting and expressing that section of the car, they even sculpted the part of the hood with the vents just ahead of the cockpit despite it not easily being visible under the slid-forward shell. The only drawback, aside from wanting the whole car to come out from under there, is that the car facade is VERY low to allow clearance of the shell, it causes the permanent hump to be quite thick. Sliding the panels backwards does remind me of the first movie quite a bit, but I thought the second movie had them fold out from under the sides - I could be thinking of the lower portion only though.

The tires look just right from beneath, the rear ones are a fantastic thickness, and there is sculpted detail in the wheel hubs even, I'm not sure if they simply used the ones from the keatonmobile but they did a good job either way. The armored car sits very low to the ground, yet has enough ground clearance to roll freely, which makes it more fun than just being a static pillbug.

At first, I was annoyed that there wasn't a repeat of their Keatonmobile underneath, I love that car; it also bugged me that there was only a single gimmick. But out of the package and in-hand, the gimmick is fun and expresses the core concept of the expanding shield fairly well, while also leaving the car a fun Batmobile toy for someone not familiar with the car itself - it says "Armored Batmobile" and that's exactly what it could be even if you didn't know it was meant to be a shell. Is it a good value? Not really, but it's not as bad as it seemed, it's nearly all metal, it has a decent film-accurate sculpt for the most part, it rolls freely with lovely tires, and the gimmick ain't so bad, so it's not a total ripoff nor a cash-grab. It's too bad that the packaging is such junk.

Darth Vader is becoming the Mickey Mouse of Star Wars.

"In Brooklyn, a castle, is where dwell I"

The use of a lightsaber does not make one a Jedi, it is the ability to not use it.